Hiromi and Tadao flee their home

Hiromi and Tadao flee their home to escape a danger Tadao believes leaves them no alternative. Their flight begins with a nighttime departure and a careful effort to avoid being seen, but refuge proves uncertain: the person Tadao hopes will help them turns out to have deceived him.

The Nighttime Escape

Hiromi is asleep in her futon when someone shakes her awake. She opens her eyes to her father’s drawn, anxious face. Tadao tells her they must get ready to leave immediately; after taking a deep breath and placing a hand on her shoulder, he insists there is no other way. Hiromi sees that his eyes are red, though she is confused about what is happening.

She nods, thinking of school and her future, but recognizes that staying in the house offers nothing. She packs as many clothes and toiletries as she can into her largest backpack, relieved that the weather is warm enough not to require bulky winter clothing.

At about two in the morning, the pair leave through a second-floor window. Tadao fears someone may be watching the front door, so they cross the neighboring rooftops with their heavy bags. Hiromi recalls that a classmate from elementary school used to climb those same rooftops for fun; the remembered game contrasts with the urgency of their own passage.

The Journey and Its First Plan

Once they reach street level, Hiromi and Tadao trot toward the next railway station rather than risk encountering someone they know at their local one. The station is five kilometers away, and the walk takes an hour and a half. They then spend a sleepless couple of hours in a small park before boarding the first train, which is bound for Hokuriku.

Tadao’s hope is that an acquaintance there will help them. He says he once assisted the man when he had financial problems and recalls that, during their last contact, the man had promised they would be welcome at any time. Hiromi, meanwhile, asks what she is supposed to do about school. The question makes the cost of the escape concrete: it is not only a change of place but a sudden break with her ordinary future.

Refuge Fails

A week after their flight, Hiromi and Tadao are in Ishikawa Prefecture, in the northwest. During the first few days they move between cheap lodging houses; for the last couple of nights they have slept in a station building and on a park bench, barely managing to rest. The first escape has not brought them security.

The reason becomes clear when they try to reach Tadao’s acquaintance, who was said to run a haulage company in Fukui. The company is fictitious, and the business card Tadao had been given is fake. Its maker had invented the business to trick people, and Tadao had believed him. The apparent lifeline that carried them toward Hokuriku therefore collapses, leaving their displacement and exhaustion unresolved.

Narrative Significance

The flight is presented through the practical details of escape: a packed backpack, a window chosen over the watched front door, a five-kilometer walk, and a long wait for the first train. Those details show how completely the decision reorganizes Hiromi’s life, from the school she fears leaving to nights spent without proper sleep. The sequence also turns Tadao’s confidence in an old promise into a reversal: the man he expects to rely on has deceived him, and the journey toward safety instead exposes how precarious their situation is.